Month: February 2005

Quick RAM Survey. RAM Upgrades Are A Wonderful Thing: Let’s take a little survey: How much RAM do you use?

bq.

I can’t imagine using a modern computer with less than 1GB of ram. When you factor in Thunderbird, Firefox, Emacs, two IM clients, Office Apps, PuTTY, the Gimp, and the various other stuff I run daily, it’s not difficult to see why.

I have 748MB at work and 512MB at home. 512MB seems like plenty to me. [Gadgetopia]

I have 512MB in my PowerBook G4, which is plenty. My PowerBook G3 has 256MB, which is a little low. I think you really only need 1 GB for a Windows game system (for maximum performance of high-end games like Star Wars Galaxies) or for an OS X system.

#
Botach Tactical –

Coldsteel Nightshade Series – fiberglass reinforced plastic
knives. Inexpensive, deadly, non-magnetic. On sale now. My favorite is
the

Skean Dhu ($6.00), pictured below. I ordered one of those plus an

FGX Tai Pan ($7.50). They listed UPS ground shipping as $7.39, but
“Worldwide Express” was, unbelievably, only $1.00, so I picked
that. I’ll let you know if they tell me it was a misprint.

bq.
Black as a moonless night, silent as the grave, and totally
undetectable…these are the qualities that make up our new
lightweight Nightshade™ series. Most are detailed reproductions of
existing Cold Steel favorites and some are new designs representing
the newest trends in high-tech, covert construction. Made from
Grivory™– the latest in fiberglass reinforced plastic, and
stronger than even the super tough Zytel® we have used in earlier
models– they are UV and heat stabilized, making them impervious to
the elements.

One of the most unique features of these knives is their handles. They
are made from deeply checkered Kraton that has been molded directly to
the blade tangs. The use of Kraton in knife handles is a Cold Steel
innovation that dates back to the early 1980’s. It has been readily
copied by most of our competitors because it offers a superior,
slightly tacky gripping surface that is unaffected by heat, cold, or
moisture. It never rusts, warps, cracks or splits even in the most
extreme environments.

Our Nightshade™ knives are light enough to be tied, tucked, or
taped just about anywhere on one’s person. And, since they are
impervious to heat, cold, moisture and extreme weather they are a
natural to hide both inside and outside your house. They can be hidden
virtually everywhere from the hedges and flowerpots in your yard, to
the refrigerator, bookshelves, and closets in your house. Keep one in
every room of the house, from the laundry room to the bathroom shower!
With violent home invasions on the rise a strategically placed
Nightshade™ could save the day, and even your life.
[End the War on Freedom]

Interesting idea. They’re pretty cheap, so I’ll look around and see if I can find them on sale from a more reliable source.

#
Walt Williams at The Bozeman (Montana) Chronicle –

Anti-federal bills move forward in House – Two Montana bills have
easily passed the first two of three votes in the House. One,

HB 304, “would prevent the state from cooperating with the federal
government in establishing nationwide standards for noncommercial
driver’s licenses.” The other,

HB 366, “would exempt guns made in Montana from federal regulation
under the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution, as long as the
guns remain inside the state.” Bravo, Montana! [lrtdiscuss] [End the War on Freedom]

I doubt these have a chance, but I’m cheering for them anyway.

#
Claire Wolfe at Backwoods Home Magazine –

The Bug-Out Campout – three clairefiles participants, Bobaloo,
Thunder, and Lightning, give their bug-out bags a field test and
discover that you really really need a ground pad for winter
camping. [claire] [End the War on Freedom]

If you haven’t got a ground pad when you need one, a debris mattress can be improvised from leaves, small branches, etc. Unfortunately, if you’re likely to be stuck camping out in a desert, this may be a problem–the debris tends to have lots of little spines in it.

MSNBC.  Misconduct. Kurdish mercenaries. Incompetence.  Custer Battles. [John Robb’s Weblog]

bq. There are new allegations that heavily armed private security contractors in Iraq are brutalizing Iraqi civilians. In an exclusive interview, four former security contractors told NBC News that they watched as innocent Iraqi civilians were fired upon, and one crushed by a truck. The contractors worked for an American company paid by U.S. taxpayers. The Army is looking into the allegations.

More attrocities committed by mercenaries working for the Feds.

Nikon D2Hs. Pre-PMA 2005: Nikon has today announced an upgraded version of their high speed shooting D2H professional digital SLR. The new D2Hs features a range of improvements which have come out of the development of the D2X as well as specific improvements to the D2H design. Highlights; 8 frames per second shooting for up to 50 JPEG or 40 RAW images, 12 bit ASIC processing, WT-2 wireless support (802.11b/g, PTP/IP), improved AWB, 3D Matrix Metering II, higher resolution ‘flicker free’ LCD monitor, modified vertical… [Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)]

Still no full-frame sensor. Well, I just recently bought a new F6, so I’m not in the market for a new Nikon body anyway. Maybe in another few years there will be a full-frame camera available.

More ‘Conservative’ Free Speech. Steve and Virginia Pearcy, a couple in Sacremento, placed a large doll of a US soldier on their house and wrote “Bush Lied, I died.”

Over a quarter of World Net Daily readers believe that the couple should be arrested for treason because this “aids and abets the enemy.”

While I don’t know exactly how representative these WND polls are in terms of the conservative grassroots, they usually get a few thousand responses (they have to be unique, as you sign in… [Antiwar.com Blog]

The original article contains this quote from a neighbor, who comes across as slightly less insane than the Busheviks quoted on Antiwar.com:

bq. “I’m outraged,” neighbor Marque Cohen told the Sacramento Bee. “We have our men and women in uniform that are dying to protect our rights and I think it’s a disgrace that somebody would be allowed to hang a U.S. soldier in effigy in front of their house.”

Less insane, yet clearly lacking any sense of irony.

California Wants GPS Tracking Device in Every Car. HTS Member writes “California has a new excuse for more taxes. Claiming losses due to fuel-efficient cars, such as Gasoline/Electric Hybrids, California is cooking-up a new system to punish people who aren’t using enough gasoline. They want to tax commuters by the mile. How would this be accomplished? By requiring everyone to install a GPS device in their vehicle, and charge them their “taxes” every time they fuel-up. From the article: ‘Drivers will get charged for how many miles they use the roads, and it’s as simple as that.. [a] team at Oregon State University equipped a test car with a global positioning device to keep track of its mileage. Eventually, every car would need one.’” [Slashdot]

Presumably we’re not supposed to realize that the government could and would use this to track the exact movements of every car in California.

REALbasic 2005 to ship in next three months [The Macintosh News Network]

That’s good news. I haven’t used REALbasic lately, thanks to a commandmant from my manager, but he’s out of the picture now. I look forward to the new version.

Notes and Tips: Apple GUI. How ironic is it when Apple directs buyers of its priciest PowerBooks to control critical settings via cryptic Unix line commands? [MacInTouch]

For those of us who remember (and still use) the Mac OS, it’s more sad and depressing than ironic. OS X is so bad that cryptic Unix commands are necessary for tasks as simple as emptying the trash!